HookedOnFishingBoats.com

The new Brooks 34: Lots of power, lots of class, and lots of cash!

The Annapolis Boat Show ends today, and in the fishing boat category there was a lot to look at!
For starters, there's a new 19' cat bay boat on the market, which is a classic-looking boat with huge fore and aft casting decks, a cat-smooth ride, and an excellent fit and finish. You can check it out at www.tidelineboats.com.

 Offshore anglers will want to hear about Viking's new offering, a 42 Convertible. This is the smallest boat in the Viking line, and their first to use IPS pod drives. I couldn't take it off the dock at Annapolis, but a walk-through made me drool... literally. This is one sweet fishboat, and the only 42-footer I've ever seen with a real, usable mezzanine in the cockpit. www.viking.com has more information.

A real shocker was the introduction of the Brooks Boatworks 34. This high-end express rides on Yamaha power, with a pair of whoping big 300-hp outboards. Inside the boat's a work of art, with teak everywhere, Corian countertops, and Ultraleather upholstery. Go to www.brooksboatworks for more info.

On the electronics front, Maptech is introducing a new version of Chart Nav Pro. They didn't officially announce it yet but check out their web site at the end of the month to see it or order the program. The big features are the addition of chart warping, which puts your charts into 3-D mode, and the addition of real-time flashing and color-coding of nav aids.

What about fishing tackle? Not much, in that department, but Abaco, the manufacturing arm of www.Alltackle.com, did introduce the Triton Halyard Lockdown here. This is a halyard mount that fits inside of your boat's gunwale, and allows you to adjust the tension of your outrigger lines at any time.

Next on tap: the Lauderdale boat show is the weekend after next. More cool fishboats and angling goodies are sure to come!

Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No.

In May of 2007 a Department of Defense report stated “China now has the capability to jam the Global Positioning System, widely used by the military to guide precision weapons.” In less than nine months, the Department of Homeland Security announced the “enhanced LORAN,” or eLORAN, system, would be developed to back up GPS. Millions were invested. Marine eLORAN products were produced. And here we are one big, fat recession later – and the 2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act allows for the termination of the system.

e for Enhanced

LORAN C has never been taken out of service, but its usefulness has always been limited by inexact navigation. Just consider its name: Long (LO) Range (RA) Navigation (N). This system wasn’t intended for exactness, it was intended to navigate over long distances. While GPS gets us within two to seven meters of dead-on 95-percent of the time, if you navigate with LORAN you could be 30 to 200 meters off. This inaccuracy occurs because of the way LORAN works: it measures time differences (that’s what TD stands for, in LORAN-speak,) in signals of up to 800,000 watts, broadcast from land-based transmitting “chains.” Each chain has a master transmitter and a series of secondary transmitters. But land masses cause distortions in these signals, and they’re slowed as they travel over land. LORAN signals can also degrade as distance from the transmitters increases, and locations that are in the fringes of coverage can expect poorer accuracy then those deep inside coverage areas.

The enhanced system, however, works like WAAS for LORAN; correctional signals are broadcast in addition to the original LORAN transmission. They operate on UTC (universal time coordinated; in other words, GPS atomic clock time) so receivers can use LORAN C, eLORAN, and GPS signals all at the same time. When the eLORAN signal is in use it increases accuracy to eight to 20 meters. Still not perfect, but good enough to know where your boat is going and more importantly to DHS, where the smart bombs are going to fall. And LORAN has one other factor that makes it perfect as a back-up system: low-frequency, high-power signals like LORAN’s are a lot hardier then GPS signals and are more or less safe from jamming, intentional or otherwise.

What, me worry?

Why should you, as an angler and a boater, care about all of this? Because in December of 2006 solar flares knocked out large numbers of GPS receivers. The stronger of two bursts of solar radiation produced 20,000 times more radio emissions than the entire rest of the sun—enough to confuse GPS receivers over the entire sunlit side of Earth. The next significant solar flares, forecast for 2011 and 2012, are expected to be 10 times as intense as those in 2006. Signal drops of over 90 percent for several hours at a time are expected, and there’s no easy fix.

On top of hostile foreign nations and natural concerns we also have to worry about simple accidents, because in at least one case GPS has already been jammed unintentionally. During a month-long period in 2002, GPS units didn’t work properly in and around Moss Landing Harbor, California. Eventually, the Coast Guard traced the problem to a moored boat which had a marine UHF TV antenna with a built-in pre-amplifier. The antenna was plugged in to an AC/DC adaptor that constantly fed it power, even when the TV was off, so it always broadcast a signal that jammed GPS units up to 2,000 feet away.

The bottom line: GPS could be knocked out of whack by nature, by accident, or by the flip of a switch in some mountain-side shack halfway around the world. We need a back-up—and eLORAN fits the bill.

eConomics

Back to the budget: in the 2009 budget, language was included to “migrate” responsibility for LORAN, 294 personnel, and $34.5 million from the Coast Guard to Homeland Security. Now, we hear that Homeland Security has the green light to turn the system off. It’s on, it’s off, it’s on again, and now it’s a firm maybe. What can you do about it? Write or e-mail your representative. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, of the committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, have already written DHS secretary Napolitano to voice their support for the eLORAN system. Make sure yours does the same.

You want the eLORAN back-up on your boat? Good idea. Unfortunately, you don’t have many options. Si-Tex (www.si-tex.com) offers an integrated e-LORAN/GPS Receiver Sensor. but it’s not cheap at a list cost of $1,000 MSRP. (Hunt around on the web a bit, and you can find it for a hair over $800.) The antenna is larger than a regular GPS antennae, and weighs two pounds. It allows you to use either Lat/long (GPS) or TDs (eLORAN) while navigating. It works with Si-Tex Colormax series, Si-Tex Trawlplotters, and Explorer Plus or P-Sea charting software.

Crossrate’s eLGPS 1110 is your other option, and it offers a lot more flexibility since it’s NMEA0183 compatible. If your system can take 0183, the Crossrate (www.crossrate.com) will get you into the e-game. Unfortunately, it’s a new product from a new company, and is currently sold through a fairly limited number of custom electronics installers. The eLGPS 1110 is slightly more compact than Si-Tex’s model at three inches high and eight inches id diameter, but it shares the same two-pound weight. Crossrate claims 99.9999-percent accuracy when using the eLGPS 1110, heading outputs within one degree whether moving or stationary, and WAAS compatibility. Future plans include a NMEA 2000 compatible model.